Join guest curator and editor Christopher Mount and Los Angeles architects Kevin Daly, Neil Denari, Elena Manferdini, and Michael Rotondi as they discuss the evolution of L.A. architecture over the past three decades. Moderated by LA Forum board member Gail Peter Borden, the event will shed light on the upcoming exhibition, A New Sculpturalism, opening at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA this June as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A., and celebrate the launch of an impressive accompanying catalogue, co-published by MOCA and Rizzoli.

April 25, 2013, 7:00 p.m.

Vitra Los Angeles
8753 Washington Boulevard Culver City, CA 90232

Cover image: © Kim Zwarts
Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Please support the LA Forum’s entry into the Goldhirsh Foundation’s LA2050 Challenge.  The LA Forum in collaboration with 8-80 Cities, The Annenberg Innovation Lab and Esri proposes S(t)imulate LA, which would activate discussion on planning policies through a gaming interface.

From the S(t)imulate LA brief:

If you had the keys to Los Angeles, what would it look like in 2050? Using the LA Forum’s online city generator game, S(t)imulate LA, you can make planning decisions, set zoning policy, and create regulatory incentives to set Los Angeles on a path toward fulfilling your vision in the next 37 years. What many residents of LA don’t realize is that the City’s planning policies restrict a lot of development and have at times resulted in challenging the implementation of ideas that would make LA a more sustainable, connected, innovative, and fun place to live. Planning decisions have a direct impact on our open space, air quality, and water supply and quality. By manipulating the City of LA’s current planning and building policies, we can generate an alternate city that could be healthier, happier, and wiser, all while accommodating the explosive population boom that we expect to continue in Southern California.

For more info on S(t)imulate LA, and to vote, click here.

All the Great Ones Leak, James Michael Tate

After an absence of ten+ years, the LA Forum announces the re-launching of the printed LA Forum Newsletter!  The Newsletter will be published 2-3 times a year, and the premiere issue features articles by Frank Escher and Simon Reynolds*, as well as an interview with Radio Iris author Anne-Marie Kinney and a centerfold (above) by James Michael Tate.

For a downloadable PDF copy of the Newsletter, click on the image or direct link below.

LA Forum Newsletter – Spring 2013

Newsletter Centerfold Image:

All the Great Ones Leak, James Michael Tate

In 2012, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House sold for $4.5 million dollars, a deal at 30% of the initial listing price. Built into the sale was the fateful condition: that the owner be committed to “complete rehabilitation of this irreplaceable icon.” While architects, preservationists and cult fans find themselves nostalgic about the edifice, the market places little to no value on the property. It begs the question how does one rehab an intentional ruin?

*Note that the article by Simon Reynolds is not available in the online version of the newsletter.  To request a copy of the printed newsletter, write to: info@laforum.org

After a ten+ year absence, the LA Forum announces the re-launching of the printed LA Forum Newsletter! The premiere issue features articles by Frank Escher and Simon Reynolds, as well as an interview with Radio Iris author Anne-Marie Kinney and a centerfold by James Michael Tate. Please join us for the launch party for the newly resurrected and revamped newsletter this Thursday, March 28 from 7 – 9 pm at Mandrake in Culver City. Free copies of the newsletter will be available.

Mandrake
2692 S. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034

Mandrake is located between Venice and Washington – right in the heart of Gallery Row. 7 minute walk from the La Cienega station on the Expo Line.

Image: James Michael Tate

All of the Great Ones Leak

In 2012, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House sold for $4.5 million dollars, a deal at  30% of the initial listing price. Built into the sale was the fateful condition: that the owner be committed to “complete rehabilitation of this irreplaceable icon.” While architects, preservationists and cult fans find themselves nostalgic about the edifice, the market places little to no value on the property. It begs the question how does one rehab an intentional ruin?

]]> http://laforum.org/content/news/la-forum-newsletter-relaunch-party/feed 0 http://laforum.org/content/news/la-forum-at-la-art-book-fair http://laforum.org/content/news/la-forum-at-la-art-book-fair#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:50:14 +0000 knarik.harutyunyan http://laforum.org/?p=17153 +]]>

The LA Forum is excited to participate in Printed Matter‘s first annual LA Art Book Fair, from February 1 – 3, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. An opening will be held on the evening of Thursday, January 31st, 2013.

Free and open to the public, the LA Art Book Fair is a unique event for artists’ books, art catalogs, monographs, periodicals, and zines presented by 220 international presses, booksellers, antiquarians, artists, and independent publishers from twenty-one countries, including PIN-UP and Project Projects.

Stop by the LA Forum’s table and check out our posters, pamphlets, and broadsheets.

February 1 – 3, 2013
Opening: Thursday, January 31, 2013, 6 – 9pm

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 N Central Ave, Los Angeles, CA

]]> http://laforum.org/content/news/la-forum-at-la-art-book-fair/feed 0 http://laforum.org/content/news/letter-from-co-founder-aaron-betsky http://laforum.org/content/news/letter-from-co-founder-aaron-betsky#comments Tue, 18 Dec 2012 02:23:01 +0000 knarik.harutyunyan http://laforum.org/?p=16827 +]]>

Thurman Grant, Aaron Betsky, Craig Hodgetts at LA Forum’s Unfinished Business Retrospective Exhibition. July, 2012

I’m writing to share my enthusiasm and support for the LA Forum and encourage you to join me. For over twenty-five years, this organization has changed the way we look at, think about, and make the designed environment in Southern California.  Its competitions, publications, exhibitions, and lectures have shown us the best work out there, and have helped make L.A. better.  It needs to keep doing that.

Recently, I came back to Los Angeles to participate in the Unfinished Business events.  The level of work and discussion I found exhilarated me.  The LA Forum is thriving as never before –if on a shoestring.  On that afternoon in Hollywood, three or four generations came together to use the group’s history to discuss its future, and we all need to be part of that.

When Christian Hubert and I founded the Forum in 1988, it started as a small group of people who were full of ideas and designs and wanted to talk about them.  We got together in the late, great Frank Israel’s office, and then in Tony Bill’s screening room.  The food was good, the discussion better.  There were knock-down fights between the Knights of Dead Tech and the Prophets of a Vital Past.  We started showing each other our kitchen additions and restaurant interiors, as well as our ideas about how to change the boulevards and build on the courtyard housing tradition.  Eventually, we found a home in the Schindler House, and there we argued, plotted, and schemed while we sat in the courtyard, overshadowed both by the campsite turned into home and West Hollywood’s condos. We ventured out to explore L.A.’s hidden tunnels, power stations, gardens, and relics.  Mike Davis opened our eyes to the geography of social inequity in which we lived.  Young designers strutted their stuff.  We redesigned the Beverly Center.

Eventually, we collected what was going on in pamphlets and then a book, Experimental Architecture in Los Angeles.  We also became a real organization (more or less), and began, I would venture, to have a real role in California’s urbanism.

In 1995, I left Los Angeles, but I have remained as a member of the Forum ever since then.  I still miss the discussions and the research.  I miss seeing some of the best work being made in the world today.  I miss exploring the alpha and omega of our urban reality with fellow enthusiasts and critics.  I also still believe in what the Forum does, and want it to continue to thrive.  That is why I support the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, and I hope you will as well.

Aaron Betsky
Co-Founder
Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design

Thurman Grant, Aaron Betsky, Craig Hodgetts at LA Forum’s Unfinished Business Retrospective Exhibition. July, 2012

This year, Forum Memberships helped support:

• The staffing and resources needed to produce the 25th anniversary retrospective exhibition and programming, Unfinished Business
• The funding for events and annual programming  including the summer series On the Map 2012: Supercession and the fall/winter series Out There Doing it 2012: Forge, Forage, Fabricate
• Substantial completion of the Forum’s digital and physical archiving of work created by the organization over the past 25 years. Digital archiving included making many of the Forum’s Newsletters from the 80’s and 90’s publicly accessible through our website
• Yearlong funding for administrative assistants, development consultants, and gallery assistants

In the upcoming year, we need support to:

• Continue funding our administrative and gallery assistant positions
• Help fund our 2013 programming, which includes summer exhibitions, our two annual series On the Map and Out There Doing It, lectures and discussions, Pecha Kucha nights, and more
• Revive our printed newsletter, which will relaunch in early 2013. The newsletter will be distributed to universities and bookstores, and mailed to LA Forum members twice a year

Contributions are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design 501(c) 3 number: 95-4161753.

Thurman Grant
President
Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design 

WUHO Gallery: Predock-Frane, Lineweights, December 2008

The LA Forum is currently accepting proposals for the Summer 2013 exhibition schedule. In keeping with the Forum’s mission, we’re looking for exhibitions and installations that provoke discourse on contemporary architecture and urban design, problematize the politics of the built environment, and/or investigate Los Angeles as a site of cultural production.

Selected proposals will be on view July-August at WUHO Gallery, located on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame. This time-frame includes installation and de-installation of the proposed exhibitions.

Exhibition proposals should include the following:

1. Exhibition Title
2. Exhibition description, images and relevant source material
3. Exhibition construction budget including storefront graphics, display materials and title wall
4. List of secured and/or potential fiscal sponsors
5. Schedule of installation, exhibition and deinstallation
6. Description of post-exhibition documentation plans, if applicable

WUHO (Woodbury University Hollywood) Gallery Description

The gallery display area is approximately 15 feet wide x 60 feet deep x 13 feet tall. It may be occupied in any manner in order to make an architecturally-charged full-scale project or exhibition. The project may use any media and alter the envelope in a non-destructive way while maintaining accessibility standards. The gallery features a glass storefront on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame, and has a ceiling-mounted suspension system, the ‘Pendulum Plane’ designed by Oyler Wu Collaborative, that may be used to support the exhibition.

Conditions

Exhibitions must be self-funded, but applicants will receive support from the LA Forum for publicity, opening reception event and staffed gallery hours for up to 15 hours per week (typically Fri/Sat/Sun 12-5pm). Request for extended hours may be considered if funding allows. Proposals must acknowledge that the gallery shall be restored to pre-exhibition status once the exhibition has been de-installed.

Exhibition Proposals should be submitted to info@laforum.org by December 10th, 2012. Winners will be notified by January 3, 2013.